Blowfly, American musician and producer, Died at 76

Clarence Henry Reid, Known as Blowfly was born on February 14, 1939, and died on January 17, 2016.

He was an American musician, songwriter and producer.

Following the year 1960 to the1970s, he wrote for and produced artists including Betty Wright, Sam & Dave, Gwen McCrae, Jimmy “Bo” Horne, Bobby Byrd, and KC & the Sunshine Band.

At that point in his career, he was also a recording artist, cutting many of his own songs, including “Nobody But You Babe”.

As a writer, he has written sexually explicit versions of hit songs for fun but only performed them for his friends at parties or in the studio.

He along with a band of studio musicians recorded a whole album of dirty songs under the name Blowfly, in 1971.

On that particular album, The Weird World of Blowfly, features Reid dressed as a low-rent supervillain on its cover.

Clarence devised this alter ego to protect his career as a songwriter, and continued to perform in bizarre costumes as his Blowfly character and continued to record sexually explicit albums throughout the 1970s/80s.

Becoming a party song, the  explicit version of his song “Rapp Dirty” (a.k.a. “Blowfly’s Rapp”) helped the album Blowfly’s Party, reportedly reaching #26 on Billboard magazine’s Black Albums chart and #82 on the Billboard Top 200 in 1980.

The Blowfly’s impious style earned Reid legal trouble.

Reid was sued by songwriter Stanley Adams, who was ASCAP president at the time, for spoofing “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” as “What a Difference a Lay Makes”.

Eventually, Reid’s own compositions have been sampled by dozens of hip-hop, R&B, and electronic artists (such as Beyonce, Wu Tang Clan, DJ Quik, DMX, Method Man & Redman, Main Source, DJ Shadow, Eazy-E, RJD2, Jurassic 5, Big Daddy Kane, Mary J. Blige, Brand Nubian, and the Avalanches) but Reid has received almost no money from sampling due to signing away most of his royalties.

On January 12, 2016, his drummer “Uncle” Tom Bowker announced in a statement on the Blowfly Facebook page that Reid was suffering from terminal liver cancer and had been admitted to a hospice facility in Florida.

Allegedly it was said that  by Bowker, the singer will release his final LP,  entitled 77 Trombones, in February of 2016.

Tracy Reid was his daughter, who is former WNBA player.

Blowfly passed away at 76 yrs old.